2019 healthcare pledges
After the 2019 General election, the BDP under Masisi was straight away met with a mammoth task when the outbreak of COVID-19 hit the country merely five months after taking office and it strained the health sector requiring strategic action and immediacy.
In the promises made five years ago, BDP planned to strengthen district health management teams by decentralising healthcare services and ensuring availability of resources. For example, the party pledged to increase the number of beds in the existing hospitals, and also increase the number of district hospitals to decongest referral hospitals, some of which the party had achieved and other projects are ongoing. On strengthening emergency medical services, the BDP had promised to develop more 24-hour health facilities and commit to strengthening e-Health and roll-out programmes such as patient management systems and telemedicine for specialised services to reach all corners of the country. They have done well on some and failed in others.
However, on establishing rehabilitation centres for clients addicted to alcohol and other drugs; the BDP still has a long way to go in achieving this dream of continuing to training health care workers, with a commitment to fund specialist training and funding of teaching hospitals. The BDP through its promise to roll out outdoor gyms to rural communities for health promotion and prevention of non-communicable diseases is still ongoing as the process has started in Gaborone. The BDP also had promised to establish a national health insurance fund but has not yet been achieved.
2024 healthcare promises
Addressing fellow democrats, BDP’s president Mokgweetsi Masisi emphasised the party's commitment to advancing the health sector. Masisi said these when launching the party manifesto last weekend in Tlokweng. The 2024 BDP Manifesto is what the party wants to achieve in five years if it wins the General Election. Specifically, he highlighted plans to implement and utilise electronic health (ehealth) records. An e-health system, he noted, will ensure that patient information including medical history, demographics, treatment, and medication is readily accessible to healthcare practitioners, thereby enabling more timely and effective care. "The care remains the cornerstone of Botswana's healthcare system. While substantial investments have already been made in infrastructure, access through districts and their developed centers continues to be crucial. "Consequently, the BDP is dedicated to enhancing healthcare in Botswana and will leverage our digitisation initiatives to achieve this goal," Masisi stated. Still, in the manifesto, the party promises to develop a secure, centralised information repository accessible to healthcare practitioners nationally. This will assist in sharing information.
2019 education promises
On education, BDP in 2019 pledged to accelerate and promote quality and access to early childhood education and care to reach at least 75%; and promote and facilitate the establishment of schools relevant to the international community at tertiary level. While the ruling party promised to merge and sharpen the focus of some tertiary institutions for efficiency as informed by the dictates of the economy, this is another dream they are yet to achieve. The BDP also promised to facilitate private sector participation through conditional leasing of institutional campuses based on relevance of proposals. On its promise to revise strategies that target the achievement of quality teaching and learning outcomes by enhancing the skills and competencies of educators, including the school management, more still needs to be done in this regard. To resource schools with e-books, books, teachers, computers, and modern technology to facilitate learning in a modern classroom, the process has been underway. The BDP also promised to build more schools and transform them into integrated schools and reduce class size to around 30 students, which is another promise it had fulfilled and still doing.
2024 education promises
As for 2024, the BDP promises to fully implement an outcome based education system and requisite infrastructure and facilities to enable implementation of the Botswana Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP). It also pledges to accelerate the implementation of early childhood education and care. Again, the BDP pledges to train and re-orientate teachers to deliver ETSSP. Furthermore, the BDP promises to continue prioritise digitisation through the provision of requisite equipment, e-content, and capacity building for schools, students, and teachers. It also promises to continue to roll out mother language instruction at pre and primary school levels.
